Why Not Let Your Kids Have a ‘Wild’ Summer?

Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos Getty Images

Three kids, two months, no school or summer camp, one mom: It sounds like the setup to a horror movie. Or maybe the trailer for Thunderdome … will she come out alive? These are my actual summer-break plans.

When I started getting the notifications in the new year that the city camp sign-ups were coming, I half-heartedly polled the kids on what they might want to sign up for, but their lack of enthusiasm matched mine and I wondered why we were bothering with the expensive rigamarole. A couple of years ago, I had to sign my eldest up for a slew of Y camps around the city for four weeks in a row while I worked a contract job and he cried every single day at drop-off. He despises the litany of stuffy gyms, random activities, and bored counselors, once describing it all as “baby jail.” That summer, I’d have to physically remove him from my leg as he wailed, promising to pick him up as early as I possibly could, the guilt eating me alive from the inside out as I pulled away, watching him watch me out the window. And the rub was that I was paying for this daily humiliation ritual.

I know there are better, more engaging, pricier camps that some kids probably love, and I’m grateful to have even the camps I can afford when I need them, but there is a part of me that really does believe summer is a sacred experience that should remain unscheduled, unplanned, and even a little uneventful.

When I was 16, an uptight mom from school asked me to watch her 13-year-old twins for a few days a week that summer. They easily could have been home alone during the day, but she got it in her head that they needed to be learning, practicing their math and French while she was at work. The kids and I quickly came to a tacit agreement that they could hang out in their room playing Nintendo while I watched daytime TV in the living room and never the twain shall meet. This was a beautiful arrangement until one day the mom came home early and busted all of us, disrupting the tender rhythm of hanging out apart that we’d carefully cultivated. She politely fired me. I guess I can’t blame her, but come on: They had their whole lives ahead of them to do math and only this one short summer to be 13.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own summers as a kid. We couldn’t afford camp, so we either went to a babysitter who shooed us out of the house until our mom picked us up or our mom was home and she kicked us out to do the same. We biked up and down the neighborhood, pooled spare change for candy that we ate at the park, and skinned our knees doing cartwheels and playing red rover. We made the best of every single day and even when we did nothing, it felt like we’d accomplished everything.

That kind of nostalgia has taken hold over a lot of parents my age. All over TikTok and Instagram you’ll find other millennials trying to figure out how to re-create a ’90s summer for their own kids, where the sentiment is generally just, “Let them get bored.” One mom is giving her seven kids a “feral” summer, focused on more time outside and less screens. Whatever you call it, the idea is just to relinquish some control over their schedules, giving kids space to feel dreamy, inspired, excited, or nothing at all.

For most of the year, my kids barrel from one activity to another, ping-pong from one lesson to another, one kids’ party to the next. We’re optimizing childhood, all in the service of giving them the most opportunities later in life. But in the process, it feels like their breeziest years are slipping away. This is the only season of their lives they have the space to slow down, and this summer, I finally get to slow down with them.

At the end of the summer, my youngest, after 18 months with me at home, will start day care. It’s a major milestone for us, for me, knowing this is my last baby and that this will be the last few months where he and I exist outside the daily chaos of pick up and drop off. It’s an exciting development — I know he’ll love being around other toddlers, and I need the break too — but I’m already grieving the change, the loss of stillness that comes with being at home in that way. Taking care of a baby is a bit like being on an airplane for me, the way that you’re suddenly forced to exist outside regular time and space, and that same feeling is what I’m hoping to re-create with all three kids over the break.

I’m not Mary Poppins, obviously, so our plans will be pretty contained: On sunny days, I’ll take the wagon down to the playground and chase my toddler around in a circle while the other two cascade from the shallow wading pool to the monkey bars and back. And thank the sweet lord that this particular park has a well-stocked coffee and snack bar that also sells the best fries in the city, so I don’t have to come super-prepared. We also have memberships to a contemporary art gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario, both of which offer kids’ activities and take us through different parts of the city.

This past winter we had only one real “snow day” and after doing every craft I could think of, I made the kids play “school.” Can’t believe I’d never thought of that one before! If rain keeps us inside, we’ll make-believe craft school and I’ll pull out the trusty Ms. Rachel songbook, which happily entertains all three. And when all else fails and I need to zone out or get some work done, there’s my good pal, TV. It’s not a good summer if you haven’t killed at least a couple days watching your stories.

There will still be a few scraped-together weeks of day camps here and there, whatever I can get them in to so late in the game, but the rest of it will be spent posted up at the wading pool, covered in Popsicle gloop, eyes burning with sweat and sunscreen. I want to empty my pockets every evening and feel my hands full of sandbox grit and stolen sticks. I want to have accomplished very little besides eating the most ice creams and climbing the most trees. I want the kids to know the kind of independence that can only come from having a say in how your own day is spent. I want them to learn about what makes them happy, curious, excited, and bored, and that it’s okay to sit in that boredom too. I want them to appreciate the border between childhood and whatever comes next and to feel comfortable staying in that space as long as they can. I want them to learn early that there has to be a balance between work and play, to see that summer is the redress for the months of focus, commitment, and energy they put in to the school year.

I want them to have a wild summer. As much for me as for them.